No one warned me...

I've been sleeping around late afternoons into the night and getting up around 12 and finishing whatever I wanted to get done yet, or just waste time for the last few days, and so I was awake yet around 4 in the morning.  I was horribly surprised to see a spider about half the size of my hand on the ceiling.  I'm generally not scared of spiders, but I realized at home I know what they all are.  Here I don't know if it's something like a recluse spider or if it's as harmless as a daddy long legs.  It somewhat resembled a daddy long legs actually (long thin legs a fairly small body), and I looked up spiders of Europe and found that he seems to be called a "Vibrating Spider."

He has his name because he shakes violently in his web if someone comes too close.  The ceiling is so tall that there was no way I could reach him to kill it.  I forgot about him for a little bit, all of a sudden he drops down on the lamp on my desk.  I got up really fast and I think it scared him, he started climbing up the string he dropped down on, I grabbed a book and got him, but I am still very concerned about finding more because they are kind of scary and I just don't want to wake up with one.  They are harmless to people though.

I got my placement this morning and am in level B22.  Remember the system I wrote about yesterday? Well the Goethe Institute here splits B2 into two levels for further specification: B21 and B22 (B22 is the higher).  I was pretty pleased about that.  The teacher (Frau Schumacher) is very nice and extremely easy to understand. I don't think anyone said anything today that I didn't fully understand, so I felt very good about that.  She did, however, say that she will look over our homework assignments for tomorrow and decide if we should be moved to a higher or lower level yet.  Every time they say they will test me I get nervous even though it will probably be ok just like always.

I already lost  my school card. I hadn't left my room after I got my key yesterday.  To get my key I needed my card, so I had to have lost it somewhere in there.  Either way I talked to the front desk and they said it's no big deal and I can easily get a new one.

For one of our assignments for tomorrow, we were given a picture of something in Goettingen.  We had to find it, learn about it, and get something short to present about it to the class in the morning.  There are 8 Americans in my class and 8 people from foreign lands.  They wanted us to split up so no Americans were together so I went with a girl from Russia named Veronika (she is only 16! probably the youngest of our class).  Her accent was a little difficult to understand at times, but she is very patient and friendly.  We had the Gaenseliesel, which is a statue that is the symbol of Goettingen, so that was easy.  We answered the questions on the paper she gave us and walked down to get a picture.

We stopped at Kaufland so that I could pick up some groceries since I got the food plan at school that is only for breakfasts and need to feed myself for the rest of the day.  I bought a fairly good amount of food for about 20 Euros (which right now is about $25.50)  Unfortunately, and I wasn't prepared for this - YOU MUST BUY PLASTIC BAGS TO USE THEM.  In America, we use them like crazy for free, I never even thought of paying for them.  The lady hadn't asked me at the check out, she probably assumed I knew what I was doing when I didn't take any. I realized that we bag ourselves and that there were no bags at the end of the check out, so I went to a closed nearby aisle to grab a bag.  A lady stopped me and asked me if I paid for it.  I said no, but explained that I had bought my groceries, just so it didn't look like I was just going through an empty aisle and filling my bag with my unpaid groceries.  She said you have to pay for bags, but she didn't seem in the mood to sell me one.  I put as much as I could in my handbag and carried the rest, dropping bottles and things the whole way back.  Embarrassing.


That was my little adventure for today.  My roommate just got here! She literally just walked in! I'm glad I'm not living alone!